The present invention relates to an ear piece and an earphone. Specifically, this invention relates to an ear piece attached to a sound tube that protrudes from an earphone body and inserted into the ear channel of a user's ear with the sound tube, and to an earphone to which the ear piece is attached.
One popular earphone is a so-called canal type in which an ear piece is detachably attached to a sound tube that protrudes from an earphone body and is inserted into the ear channel of a user's ear with the sound tube.
The canal type earphone is divided into a type in which a speaker unit is installed in an earphone body (referred to as a unit-installed type, hereinafter) and another type in which a speaker unit is mounted on the top of a sound tube (referred to as a top mount type, hereinafter).
A unit-installed type earphone is disclosed in Japanese Un-Examined Patent Publication No. 2008-277909 (referred to as a document 1, hereinafter).
The unit-installed type earphone disclosed in the document 1 is equipped with a filter member for sound characteristics adjustments that is fixed to an ear piece detachably attached to a sound tube, for achieving desired sound characteristics.
Also disclosed in the document 1 is that initial sound characteristics can be regained by replacing the ear piece with a new one if the mesh of a filter member is filled with a foreign body such as earwax.
The configurations of the earphone disclosed in the document 1 are that: a filter member is bonded to an ear piece with a double-sided tape; and an annular filter member is fit in a large-diameter section of the through hole of an ear piece.
Ear pieces are usually made of a rubber material such as silicon rubber.
The earphone disclosed in the document 1 and equipped with a rubber-made ear piece is disadvantageous in that the filter member could be fallen off or detached if a double-sided tape cannot exhibit a high adhesion force under a low-temperature environment, due to the attachment of dust to the surface of the filter member or the ear piece to be bonded, etc.
Moreover, in the assembly operation of the earphone disclosed in the document 1, the ear piece having the annular filter member fit in the large-diameter section thereof is deformed to a greater extent when it is attached to the sound tube. And, when the ear piece is deformed, the filter member could be displaced or detached from a predetermined position in the large-diameter section of the ear piece.
Accordingly, the earphone disclosed in the document 1 has room for improvement in assembly workability.